The following Resolution was adopted by unanimous vote of the Rockingham County Members of the New Hampshire State Republican Committee, at a regular meeting of this body, on Wednesday, February 19, 2014, in Brentwood, New Hampshire.

The 2013 legislative session became a turning point for the House Republican Alliance (HRA). During the course of the session, we took action in a number of new initiatives and increased our participation in others. The record number of policy press releases began in March with a press release opposing the initial 83% gas tax increase. The list of the more significant accomplishments is below.

The governor of New Hampshire just submitted an amicus brief in the lawsuit against the “Live Free or Die” state’s scholarship tax credit program. Last year, Governor Maggie Hassan unsuccessfully sought its repeal. The brief offers nothing new in the way of legal arguments.

THE JUDICIAL branch has attempted to lay the blame for its decision to cancel jury trials in five out of the next 15 months on "cuts" in the judiciary’s budget made by the Legislature. But not only were there no "cuts" in the judiciary’s budget, the Legislature actually increased the budget for jury trials by more than 25 percent. With this context, the decision to cancel the jury trials and blame the Legislature appears to have much more to do with pressuring the Legislature into further increasing the judiciary’s budget than with economics.

The supreme court has now rejected the right of the legislature to audit the administrative workings of the court system.

"The ‘balance of powers’ is supposed to allow any of the three branches to block an unconstitutional order from another — otherwise we would only need one branch of government: the courts. You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all Constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." — Thomas Jefferson